Marion Louisgrand

Director, Kër Thiossane, Senegal

Marion Louisgrand Sylla is the director of Kër Thiossane, a media art centre with an artist-residency programme, based in Dakar. She founded this cultural and artistic place in 2002 with her husband in a private house. The aim of Kër Thiossane is the integration of multimedia in artistic practices (music, dance, theatre, and visual arts) and the culture of open access, numeric creation through computer science and communication technologies.

Within UE-ACP cultural Programm - 9em – FED, from 2010 to 2012, Kër Thiossane developped in collaboration with others structures in Africa and Caraïbes a programme called "Rose des Vents Numériques". This programme aimed to encourage access to artists and larger public to technics and new media artistic practices, more specifically in the field of free software. It created a new media art network in Africa and Caraïbes to allow long terme cooperation.

She organises every two years AfroPixel, the first African Digital Art Festival, during the Dakar Arts Biennale. In May 2014, “Gerden of resistance” with the opening of Kër Thiossane’s school of Commons was the fourth edition.Defko AK Niep (do it with others)’s fablab opened in 2014 is one of the main actual activities of Kër Thiossane. This fablab based in the public space makes the connexion between traditional practices and numeric machines.